VOL. XLV.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 463 



The wound was cured in about six weeks, and the woman, delivered from 

 a long state of misery, grew fat and lusty, and now enjoys good health. 



Comparing these circumstances together, it seems reasonable to believe this 

 fruit never was in the cavity of the womb, but that the impregnated ovum was 

 stopped in its passage through one of the Fallopian tubes, where it grew, and 

 was detained so many years; and that the inflammation, which happened below 

 the navel, was not owing to the rottenness of the fetus, or to its bare bones 

 seeking a discharge, but rather to some accidental friction of the containing sac 

 against the peritonaeum, thus producing adhesion, obstruction, inflammation, 

 &c. The fetus, before this accident, must have remained all these years entire, 

 and without perfect corruption : for it took no less time, after its communication 

 with the common air, before it showed marks of putrefaction, than a fresh sub- 

 ject, kept in the same degree of heat, would have done. 



The doctor's observations on the bones were : that they had a full proportion to 

 those of a child at nine months, and that the fibres were more compact, and their 

 articulations stronger. The sockets for the teeth were fixed on each side of the 

 jaws ; the dentes incisores of the upper jaw were high and large ; the molares had 

 almost all begun to ossify in their alveoli ; at least the crown, which was the cor- 

 tical part, was formed, and they were filled internally with a cretaceous substance. 

 In new-bom children those parts are seldom found so far advanced, which gives 

 reason to believe this child did not die within the ordinary time of pregnancy, and 

 that the difterent accidents, before mentioned to have happened, were chiefly 

 owing to the preternatural situation of the fetus. 



Some places in the skull appear to have been carious, and corroded by some 

 sharp humours ; and nature, supplying its ossifying juices, had repaired these 

 places, and rendered them more solid and whiter than the rest, but very uneven 

 and scabrous, from the different times and directions of the bony sproutings. 

 There were likewise exostoses on the ends of the thigh-bone, and some other 

 bones. 



It is very difficult to determine about what time the growth of these produc- 

 tions began or ended. Supposing it from the time of the disorders that happened 

 in the first months of pregnancy ; would not such a disease have caused death to 

 the fetus, before it had come thus to a full growth ? If it was the consequence 

 of the violent accidents which happened about the time of the natural birth, the 

 child then must have continued alive some considerable time afterwards, during 

 which these bony excrescences were formed ; there being a perfect ossification, 

 as performed by the laws of circulation, and not by any vegetative or petrifying 

 power, as in inanimate bodies. 



Two or 3 of the lateral processes of the spine were what first passed through 

 the little ulcer; the rest of the bones, (except a few that were lost in cleaning) 



